Why would men join The Brocial Network?

Images of scantily clad women are being widely circulated without their knowledge through a private "men's only" Facebook group, reigniting the debate for stricter privacy laws for social media in Australia.

Since its inception two weeks ago, "The Brocial Network" has attracted more than 8000 members, including at least four players from a Melbourne-based AFL club.

The site features hundreds of images of women in bikinis and lingerie, obtained from the personal Facebook photo albums of the members' female friends.

Tillii, a 21-year-old student who is pictured in a bikini with her friends, wasn't aware that her photo had been circulated via the page.

"It makes me feel sick that people would go to the effort of taking [uploading] the picture and posting it up," she said. "I just thought [the picture] would be taken as fun, not as the way that they've turned it around."

Tillii has since been inundated with random "friend" requests from men she doesn't know.

Jade, 21, was shocked that images of her and her friends on holiday were circulated on the site without her consent.

"I'm a little bit angry, to be honest. If it was one of my friends who has copied a photo of me to put on a public website and not let me know then I'd feel extremely betrayed," she said.

"I think it's just perverted and disgusting and wrong … it's wrong that they can take photos of innocent women who have no idea that these photos are being used on a public site where men can just go [look at] whenever they like," she said.

Group creator "King Brocial" advises members via "The Brocial Code" to trawl friends' social media sites for salacious images. The Brocial Code is a list of rules that must be adhered to in order to retain membership and access to the page.

One rule directs members to upload images of girls which "reveal a little too much". Members are removed from the group if they fail to post images within a week of being added.

Once images are uploaded, members (known as "Bros") post the women's names and links on the site which allows King Brocial's subjects to access the personal Facebook pages of any of the women on the site.

Earlier this week, membership to the group was frozen temporarily by the creator because men were attempting to add female friends to the group. Another of the Brocial Code rules is that "the girls that know about this site are kept to a minimum" and that there "shouldn't be any [female members] in the first place".

University of Melbourne public policy lecturer Dr Lauren Rosewarne said: "Any website that has images of women posted, asking men to rate them, is revolting. There's no excuse."

King Brocial is cashing in on the site's popularity by selling $5 "I'm a Bro" wristbands on the Facebook page.

Several images have been reported as inappropriate to Facebook, prompting the creator to ask members to remove the images from the page to "reduce the amount of attention [they're] receiving" from Facebook administrators.

The level of account privacy on Facebook is at the user's discretion. According to the privacy statement listed on Facebook, users can actively change the level of privacy on the content they upload to the social networking site.

There are no privacy laws governing the sharing of private images through social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Australian Privacy Foundation vice-chairman Dan Svantesson said no crime had been committed.

"Few people understand how weak privacy protection is from a legal perspective in Australia," he said. "We haven't seen the long-term consequences of people placing so much personal information on things like Facebook. It's still quite a new phenomenon."

Dr Rosewarne said people should be wary of their privacy settings on social media sites. "There needs to be more education, more media literacy around what privacy actually means online," she said.

Tillii said she would be wary in future of the types of images she shares with friends online. "I'd be a lot more hesitant in putting anything up," she said.

Jade agreed: "I just hope it's shut down and something is done about it so it's not done again."

206 comments

All hail the King!

Commenter

jack

Location

Melbourne

Date and time

May 18, 2011, 8:48AM

How often do people have to be told to NOT put anything on social media sites that they would not want to be circulated. I'm not condoning what has happened but peple really need to take care of their own privacy & personal security. Also what is the significance of adding "four players from a Melbourne-based AFL club" out of a membership of over 8000. Is this another beat-up of afl player behavior? How many doctors & lawyers & policemen are members of the "group"?

Commenter

basil

Location

Hobart

Date and time

May 18, 2011, 8:49AM

What are you going to do when your (yes you) photos and or blog ideas or quotes are used for some very profitable calendars or magazines, without your approval or knowledge, in ten years time, when you have forgotten about them?What are you (yes you who are only 13 - 20) going to do when you lose a string of jobs because of the photos you posted ten years ago?What are you going to do when your own teenage children find your old photos and stupid comments?The younger and more "tech savvy" you are now the worse it will be in ten years when someone, either a relative or an employer wants to get a piece of your life and can use all the stuff you are typing today in blogs and your photos to control you or make a lot of money without sharing any with you.

Commenter

Bill

Location

Australia

Date and time

May 18, 2011, 8:51AM

Sounds like a great idea! I tried to join but it looks like it's disappeared =(

Commenter

Richard

Location

Sydney

Date and time

May 18, 2011, 8:53AM

Lesson 1 - Social Networking - Be wary of people taking photos of you and also what sort of photos you take and post of yourself , it could come back and bite you.....hard

Commenter

Shemp

Location

melb

Date and time

May 18, 2011, 8:53AM

Its simple, you dont want pics like this appearing on the net, Dont take them, and dont upload them, do you know how many boards there are on the net that show amateur pics, derived from facebook, myspace, picasaweb, flickr, etc, etc... and sometimes they include private pictures too, if you dont want your body appearing on the net for all to see, dont take pictures of it, because if you do, it will end up there, sooner or later..

Commenter

Jason

Location

Melb

Date and time

May 18, 2011, 8:54AM

Seriously, these guys make being a decent bloke hard work. We all get tarred with the same brush. Grow up "Bro's" and show a bit of respect.

Commenter

Chuck

Date and time

May 18, 2011, 8:54AM

Unfortunately, once you have posted something in one of these networking sites, you lose control of it and probably don't own it anymore. Don't post anything you don't want the world to see. Too bad you can't stop your vacuous friends from posting photographs of you.

Commenter

Knee Jerk

Location

Sydney

Date and time

May 18, 2011, 8:55AM

Why people upload photos to a public domain and then complain about it is beyond me.

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